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 Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:25 pm
Fyja was bored. That was unusual, with so many siblings, but it did happen. Everyone else was sleeping, and the little cub had been left to his lonesome. A moment's thought and his recent adventure on the rocks with Vu, one of the local cubs, came to mind. Hmm. Even if Vu wasn't there, the rocks would be.
With a sigh he heaved himself up and set off. More and more it seemed 'alright' to wander. The cubs were growing, and their parents seemed to think their excursions were natural. He wouldn't be worried over.
A quarter hour's travel and he spotted the familiar playground. Determined to look about as he'd been doing before meeting Vu, he slipped between the stones, sniffing here and there.
The dark cub was obvious. Vu on the other hand tended to blend in where ever he went. The high golden grass complimented his light colors as he lay on the dirt mound. While soaking his lightly colored coat in the sun, Vu spotted Fyja’s black shape trotting through the grass. His ears went back, lips curling up in an impish grin. He slunk into the grass, doing his best imitation of a lioness on the prowl, and followed Fyja all the way to the rocks.
Holding his excitement in check was hardest. He kept worrying Fyja would see him. Since Fyja was so easy to spot, Vu kept his distance and managed to avoid being seen until Fyja reached the clearing with the rocks. Vu felt surprised to see Fyja had decided to come back to this area. Maybe Fyja was looking for him. That made Vu feel important. It also made him happy because it showed Fyja liked him, and this made him all the more excited over what he was about to do. His small black claws kneaded the earth.
Vu imagined himself sneaking over to the rocks and quietly climbing up. Then he would drop down from the rock above and tackle his friend. That would be so much fun! Too excited to wait for the right moment, Vu burst from the tall grass at full speed, forgoing the more covert route over the stones and leaping onto Fyja’s back from behind with a mad cackle. “You’re mine!”
Fyja had been quite enamored, having found some marks other than those made with claws. He wasn't cure what they'd been made with, but they were strange, and seemed to form patterns. He'd just been about to look closer when the yell from behind startled him. Too late to leap away, he did the only thing he cold and let himself be hit, going limp and flowing with the hit, hoping whatever it was would go rolling of over his head.
A moment later he recognized the voice and his ears flicked back up (having been pressed flat when the attack began). "...Vu?" He questioned, trying to get a better look. Typical to his nature, as Vu would know, he asked no more questions, settling for merely twisting about to see for himself.
“I pinned you, Fyja!” Vu grabbed his ear and tugged at it playfully. He didn’t give any thought to whether this hurt Fyja. Fortunately, this ‘affectionate’ tugging ended quickly as Vu moved to the side and stood facing his friend. His tail stood in the breeze and he wore a wide smile. “What happened to that thing on your back? It’s not there anymore,” he said without realizing what an obvious observation he was making.
Fyja rolled back to his feet and sat, taking a moment to lick his paw and then smooth down his ruffled fur and ear. Always the proper one, he habitually worked on maintaining his best appearance, even when at play. "Ah..." He shrugged. His siblings had taken it. "Torn up." He explained simply. It hadn't been his to start with, and he'd felt poorly about it, but then the original owner had been aware that the thing was in shabby shape when it'd been given over. They had to know it wasn't going to last long.
“Oh. Too bad.” Vu chuckled. He had been thinking of tearing the thing up himself. They could have made a game of it, like the games of tug-o-war he played with his siblings when they weren’t training. That would have been a lot of fun, too.
Fyja was funny the way he was always making himself look tidy. Vu liked to look good too, because he was going to be a warrior someday and looks were important, especially if one happened to meet a god, but Fyja cleaned constantly. It was weird. Hoping to be a pest, Vu trotted up to him and tugged on his other ear, laughing.
Fyja ceased cleaning and sat still, letting Vu tug and pull at his ear. He slowly glanced over at the other cub. Silence. The eye glinted, and in a flash he'd shoved Vu off of him and onto his back, pinned! Fyja then proceded to, with much patience, pull and tug at both Vu's ears, making the hair on them stick up at all sorts of odd angles. For all the rough treatment, a smile spread on his lips, and finally, with a laugh, he leapt away, up onto a rock.
A swipe of the paw and his own fur was settled back into place. He lay down, peering over the edge of the stone at Vu, eyes bright with contained laughter.
“Guh! Hey, no fair!” Vu swatted at Fyja’s face and tried to push him off with his foot, snarling cubbishly. When he backed off Vu rolled onto all fours and started to circle Fyja. He crept to the left. He slunk to the right. Back to the left. His tail twitched. Vu shimmied to the right—no! He shimmied to left and pounced at Fyja, hoping to knock him down.
Fyja grinned and leapt aside at the last moment, skidding to a stop. Now it was his own turn to circle...left right, right again. He slipped behind a rock, and, leaving Vu to wonder which side he'd come out from, leapt up and back, scampering out of the rock field. If they got too rough in there, sooner or later someone would tackle stone, not cub, and get really hurt. Once outside, he braced himself and let out his best roar. It wasn't nearly like any adult lion's, but it was still decent, for a cub.
Vu chased Fyja down with a breathless grin. When he first met Fyja he thought he would be boring because he was so quiet. Now Vu loved his quiet friend. Every moment with him was like a game because he was always trying to figure out what Fyja was thinking.
Stopping in the clearing, Vu put one paw in front of the other and curled his tail as he took a deep breath. He roared louder than most cubs. After all, he practiced a lot. That was not to say that it was a deep roar. Nor was it rumbling. To Vu it was the roar of a great warrior in the making. He stood up on his hind legs and swatted at Fyja playfully, hoping he would join him in sparring.
Fyja grinned, seeing his trick hadn't fooled Vu at all. Well he was ready! Puny mane bristling, he moved forward, as if to attack. He skittered back then, and circled, eager to draw the cub forward, to make him attack first. If he leapt, he could duck low and lunge. If he kept to the ground, he could use his claws...Tactics ran rampant through his mind.
Vu bounded around and circled Fyja, seeing through his tactic. He lunged forward and dove back tauntingly, trying to make him strike first, but this was mere cub play and not his mother’s stringent training. Before long his mind started to wander. His eyes glazed over slightly as he listened to Fyja’s necklace rattle around his neck.
Aha! A moment of weakness. Wasting no movements, Fyja leapt forward, bowling Vu over and pinning him. He bent and nibbled the other cub's mane, tugging on it, making it mussed and tangled. He patted one side of Vu's face with a paw, pricking claws out just enough to touch, not hurt. Then, before Vu could react, he sat down KERPLOP! Flattening the other cub beneath him.
Vu’s gaped at Fyja with the whites of his eyes. He tried to jump to the side, but his reaction was sluggish and in no time at all he found himself pinned. His mother’s training echoed mockingly in his mind. If she were here to see this he didn’t know what he would do. Frowning severely, Vu tried to shove Fyja off. “Okay, okay! You win… for now.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:31 pm
Fyja smiled down at his friend and clambered off. "Distracted?" He asked, reaching up and batting at the beaded necklace. He'd not thought of using the sound to draw his opponent's attention before, but he sure would remember it from now on. Though he was sad to have lost the cape, it probably wouldn't have done him much good. It'd probably have ended up tangling his feet or something. Amira would probably be mad though.
Vu nodded grudgingly as he watched the beads clatter. On his second trip to the stones he had noticed something odd. The stone he thought he had used to climb up the last stone wasn’t there, and he quickly figured out what happened to it, even though he didn’t want to believe it was true. He turned his side to Fyjal and shook himself. “I’m tired of this game anyway. Where did you get that… thing?” He didn’t know what to call it.
Fyja watched the other cub. Something was bothering him. Was it that he'd lost? Hmm...well Fyja didn't want him to feel bad. Maybe showing him just where his things had come from would make amends. It seemed he was interested as well. "Not far." He tossed his head, motioning to a nearby line of trees. "This way." He announced, taking off at an easy walk. If he remembered right, the hole was through the trees and a little ways on towards the swamps. Still i nthe Pridelands, but further out.
Vu fell into step at Fyja’s shoulder. The walk seemed to infect him with the silence of his friend. Vu was not all thumps and tussle. He had a mind, though he didn’t know it yet, and as they walked he felt his thoughts begin to wander. He wondered about his father, his grandfather, and about Mrost. After a while he started to think about where Fyja was leading him. This part of the pride was unfamiliar to him and he was starting to worry. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
Fyja nodded, and it occured to him the Vu didn't know that he wasn't another pridal cubs yet. He nodded to reassure the other and went on, reaching the trees and spilling through with the ease of one born to it. And he was. Though he'd never lived inthe swamps, his blood was there, and the practice came naturally to him. He felt more at home there than in the open, really. Eventually they exited the trees on the other side and Fyja spotted a familiar rock that had been near the area Amira's dig was in.
Keeping his head down, Vu followed close to Fyja. His red eyes darted anxiously. Troubled by the dark shadows dappling the earth, Vu looked up and watched the leaves of the trees hang dead still over the blue sky. “This place is weird.”
Fyja swatted Vu's shoulder with a paw, trying to encourage him. There wasn't anythign scary about trees, right? And they were through them now, looking out over more vast grassland. In the distance, a ditch ran where once there must have been a small creek. "There." He motioned to it, and took off at a run. Vu liked competition so... "Race you there...!"
Vu blinked in surprise and grinned. He glanced over his shoulder, a little worried about what mother would think if she found out about this, then took off after Fyja with a burst of speed. “You’ll never beat me!” he whooped as they ran neck and neck.
Fyja grinned and let his friend speed ahead. He kept close though. It was good to see Vu back to normal. When they finally reached the ditch, rather than leap over it, Fyja slowed, and stopped. He sniffed at the bank and then looked up and down its length. Spotting something, he trotted around to a bit a little further down and peered over the edge.
Momentum carried Vu across the ditch in a single leap. Dust billowed from his little paws as he skidded to a stop. Panting, laughing, he bounced back to the edge of the ditch and grinned breathlessly at Fyja. “Did you see? Did you see what I did?! I flew!”
He looked into the ditch as he caught his breath. It must have been a river once. He lay down on the bank, letting his paws hang over the edge and smiling.
Fyja looked up, coughing a bit at the dust. It was quite a leap, even with the running start. He smiled warmly at Vu, his way of praising him, and returned to looking down into the pit. He could still see where the dirt had been turned over. There likely wasn't anything left, but then who would have known there was anything there to start? He pointed down with a paw. They had to go down, not over.
Vu leaned over the edge of the pit, tail thumping on the ground. Oh, down there. He inched forward, holding his body firmly to the wall until he was half-way in, then dropped down to the bottom of the ditch and looked around. His ears twitched and he sniffed at the air. “I wonder where all the water went… Do you think there’s a dead crocodile down here, Fyja?”
The idea excited him. He heard of crocodiles from listening in on other members of the pride. They sounded scary. He wanted to meet one!
Fyja clambered down after Vu, keeping to the far end of the ditch to give them room to maneuver. He didn't think there were any crocs. They'd probably gone with the water to wherever it had gone. Unless one had crawled in here and died later.
With a shrug he bent to the dirt, pawing it lightly. "...She said she'd seen an old lion burying his things here." Who 'she' was he left unsaid, as with how she'd 'seen' this, or who the 'old lion was'.
“Do you think he was a god?” Vu asked excitedly as he bent to dig. “Mother told me that gods can make themselves look mortal and fool us. And some gods have special items. Like Mrost. Mrost has special armor. It’s hard, like rock, but smooth and shiny like a pool of water and it protects him from danger. Mrost is really cool.”
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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 4:36 pm
Fyja shook his head. Gods would have nicer things, he'd assumed. And gods lived forever, so they wouldn't look old, right? "Just a lion," he commented, digging at the other end. "Who is Mrost?" He'd heard about several gods in passing from strangers, but never Mrost. It seemed that Vu was one to know, and Fyja liked to learn things. He snorted when a clump of dirt stuck to his nose, and he pawed it off before continuing his work.
Vu curled his tail suspiciously as he dug. He hoped they found something interesting, but even if they didn’t it was fun to be digging with his friend away from adults. There was a buzz of trouble in the air. “I dunno if I should tell you. Mother might get mad,” he chuckled.
Of course, Vu’s mother also said Vu should be wary of lions within his own family, aside from his brothers and sisters, and Vu had mixed feelings about that. Mother also said that family was one of the most important things in the world. If that was true, then surely his family could be trusted. He wondered if he and Fyja were related. After all they both had red eyes and none of his brothers or sisters did.
“But I might tell you, if you promise not to say anything. You have to really swear.” He paused long enough to sit and hold out his paw to Fyja.
Fyja waited patiently for his companion's reply. He worked at the dirt, though he didn't expect much. He and Amira had to have dug everything up. The digging paused a moment when Vu said his mum might not like him to know. That was odd...if Mrost was a god, what did he have to fear from mortals knowing his name? It didna't make sense, but he let Vu go on.
Hearing Vu speak up again, he stopped what he was doing and regarded the other. "Who would I tell?" He finally said, dropping his muddy paw in the other's.
Vu laughed. “I guess you’re right. Okay!” He flittered with excitement, a huge grin on his face. “When my grandpa was a cub – same as me – he met Mrost by those rocks, where we were playing. Mrost liked my grandpa because he was a strong cub. Mrost said that one day, when my grandpa was strong enough, he would let him join his army because Mrost is the God of War. He’s the biggest, toughest, best god of all and nobody ever messes with him. That’s why my family worships him.
“Mother says that Mrost has been gone for a long time. If he ever comes back, we’re going to follow him and be warriors and kill all the bad creatures. That’s the best thing about Mrost. He helps lions fight for good and he makes sure the good side always wins. Like if there was ever a bad king, Mrost would come and help all the good lions get rid of the bad ones, so everyone can be at peace again.” Vu assumed Mrost would only help good lions, even though his mother never said so. It only made sense.
Fyja listened raptly. Mrost was a god, yes, that he knew. It was fascinating to know someone who was related to someone who had met a god. Fyja wondered what he looked like...The armor Vu had described reminded him of a turtle shell, and for a moment he entertained the idea of a lion wearing a huge turtle shell. It seemed a little silly for a god though...but you never knew! Turtles were tough, when you thought about it. It took so much energy to eat one you might as well have not eaten at all. So maybe a god would want to look like a turtle.
The fact that Mrost was infact the god of war was a surprise to Fyja as well. He'd never seen war, but he didn't like the sound of it. What sort of person worshiped a god of killing and battle? Of course, if Mrost was a benign god, like Vu said, that was different. "What does Mrost look like? And how do you know he'll come back?"
“Mother says he will.” He thought for a moment, pawing absently at the mud where they were digging. “I’m not really sure what he looks like. I’ve never seen him. Mother has, though. She told me that Mrost is big and… and blue. With big horns. He’s got these bright markings on his body. And spikes down his back. He has wings, but they’re all torn.”
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Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:08 pm
Fyja shrugged. He believed what his parents told him, so Vu doing the same made sense. Parents still had that mystical all-knowing quality that cubs worldwide attributed to them. Of course, it was hard to imagine a big blue lion with horns and wings and spikes. "Were the hrons like a waterbuffalo's, or like a gazelle's?" He asked, trying to get a better idea, not knowing that Vu probably had no clue either. His paws, meanwhile, had begun to hit small stones in the dirt, and he frowned. Would the old lion have dug down through the stones?
“Um… I dunno. I bet they’re really big though.” Vu pushed at the stones. The rocks made a pleasant clacking sound as he pushed them aside, revealing a long dusty object that looked nothing like a rock. It was shaped like the beak of a bird, only much thinner and the color of bone. Vu’s red eyes flashed in amazement. “Hey! I found something!”
Vu hastily pushed aside more stones. He stuck his nose into the dirt and closed his jaws around the bone-like stake. At first the object stayed stuck in the ground, but with a few good pulls it came loose and Vu dragged it from the soil. It was a necklace with beads made from elephant ivory and one long, knife-like stake in the center. Having never seen an elephant in his life, Vu assumed the beads must have been made out of ordinary bone, utterly surprised by the thing he held in his mouth.
Fyja stopped digging. Vu'd found something! He trotted over, peering around his friend. "Like mine." He mumbled, noting that it was the same structure, if not the same thing exactly. Maybe now Vu'd be able to not be distracted by the rattling of his own necklace. "Here." He took the necklace and tossed it up and over Vu's head, so it settled around his neck. Obviously it was too big, but then Vu could grow into it.
Assuming their work was done, Fyja showed how to get out, clambering nimbly up a thick vine that had been draped over the side of the ditch. Once out, he looked back in, being sure Vu could escape. It wouldn't be the second time a cub had been trapped down there.
Vu nudged the necklace with his paw, smiling brightly as it rattled. He never felt weight on his neck before. The sensation was odd and he loved the newness of it. “Thanks for taking me out here. This was really fun!”
He put his front paws against the wall of the ditch and studied the vine for a moment before starting to climb. He was clumsy at first, but quickly got the hang of it and managed to pull himself out of the ditch on his first try, pausing to catch his breath and smile at Fyja. “I’ll race you again!”
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